Players and Manager stay the same

but MLB keeps picking off members of the Dodger family. Last year the Braves took Alex Anthopoulos out of the Dodger front office and made him their Executive Vice President. The Phillies took Gabe Kapler and made him their field manager. This year the Giants continued the raiding by making Farhan Zaidi their new President of Player Operations. 2018 Dodger 3rd base coach Chris Woodward was plucked by the Texas Rangers to become their filed manager. That is quite a brain drain in just two years. I’d like to wish Chris Woodward good luck but find it hard to do the same for Farhan. I kind of hope he’s a spectacular failure. Nothing personal.

Yet, much to the consternation of many Dodger fans, David Roberts had his option exercised and will manage the team in 2019 even as they work toward a longer extension. I have been blown away by the number of Dodger fans who have told me that Roberts should have been fired. Almost to a person, every Dodger fan I know who I don’t know via a Dodger blog or social media has expressed this opinion to me. I guess I was unaware of how many of them have placed the blame on him for the Dodgers not winning a World Championship because he mismanaged the World Series. I thought he made some questionable moves and none of his hunches worked out but overall I thought the team lost the World Series because:

The played a deeper than normal outfield in games one and two in Boston

I’m not a big Dave Roberts fan, but I hardly think he was the reason the team didn’t win the World Series. I do know that if Puig had played like Machado, shit would have hit the fan but given he was a future free agent I guess Roberts felt it best to just let Machado be Machado. Though given the performance of Machado in the World Series they might have been better off if shit had indeed hit the fan.

The good news (at least for me) is all the Dodgers who could leave are coming back except Grandal. In an unexpected move Clayton Kershaw signed on for an additional year with no opt-out so it looks like he just might be a Dodger for life. The Dodgers saved a million by re-negotiating a contract for one year with David Freese. Today we learned that Hyun-jin Ryu accepted the Dodgers qualifying offer and will return in 2018.

That leaves Yazmani Grandal as the only player of note leaving the Dodgers. His spot will be tough to fill but I’ll look at that in a future column.